Fields of Fire

When first published in 1978, this novel launched the writing career of James Webb, a former Marine and decorated combat veteran who served in Vietnam. A story of young Marines enduring the hell of Southeast Asian jungles while facing an invisible enemy: war itself. Filled with the sounds and smells of combat and told from a unique first-person perspective, this book is about people, an amazing variety of closely observed characters caught up in circumstances beyond their control. It is a powerful work that brilliantly expresses the basic ambiguity of war: the repulsion of war's destruction contrasted with the grisly attraction of war as the ultimate test of survival.